The Most Annoying Commercials Ever Made -or- Why I Hate White People

As I was taking the obligatory post-meal nap during the Pats/Lions game, I had a moment where I felt like I was drifting briefly back into consciousness. In this half-sleep haze I dreamt of an irritatingly precocious indie-rock duo singing a crappy rendition of a holiday classic in a car commercial.

It was a convergence of all those things I hate most: automotive ads, hipsters, and music that makes boring white people go bonkers. What a nightmare!

Then, last Sunday, I visited YouTube to watch a video of a baby monkey riding backwards on a pig (it never gets old!). When I reached the website, I saw an ad and had a shocking realization:

HOLY S***, IT WAS REAL!

The commercial is part of Hyundai’s “Hyundai Holidays” ad campaign. Hyundai, not content to merely cheapen the holiday, actually found an hipster indie darling duo to provide the images and music for this crap.

Forget all the O’Reilly rants. THIS is the real War on Christmas.

Who cares if their music is disposable and forgettable? LOOK AT HOW PRECIOUS AND ADORABLE THEY ARE! OMG OMG OMG!

The duo call themselves Pomplamoose. Their name is an intentional bastardization of a French phrase that roughly translates to “poor man’s She & Him” (who themselves are incredibly overrated). Pimplemooses gained notoriety with their “quirky!” and “delightful!” YouTube videos, which featured them performing new material and old standards like The Chordettes’ “Mr. Sandman” with all the originality and depth you’d expect from a generation of indie musicians woefully underexposed to good music and possessing an alarming lack of taste and shame.

These acts are becoming all too familiar to the music scene: bland, uber-Caucasian music that plays it safe and lazy, but with a cheeky smile that makes people think that they’re somehow doing something new and adventurous and different.

Is this what my generation has evolved into? Are we really that easy to manipulate?

Yep.

We’ve been fooled into thinking that the internet has somehow made us more aware, smarter, and less subservient to outside influences; that we’re so clever and with it. The reality of the situation is that we’re stupid, annoying brats who only feign a predisposition towards higher forms of music and art. What’s worse, despite our attempts to appear ironically whacky and out there, we’re so easily pigeon-holed that a foreign car company doesn’t even have to waste time creating a fake band. They can just pluck the stereotype from YouTube: new music that isn’t new music at all, thrown under a veil of internet humor in a half-hearted attempt to lend it credibility.

It’s the artistic equivalent of a joke told by a child who has forgotten the punchline because he didn’t understand what it meant in the first place.

Anyway, here’s a couple examples of these terrible f***ing ads with the terrible f***ing music.

Exhibit A (the offender that brought this to my attention):

Exhibit B:

Call me old fashioned, but I’ve always preferred rock stars who shamelessly self-destruct over those that shamelessly sell out.

If I were in an indie pop band today, my first question about every song I wrote would be, “Would this sound good in a Target commercial?” Because, while I’m all about artistic integrity, I gots bills to pay.

Wow, guy. You just discovered the Internet doesn’t solely create new content, but takes part in the greater human dialogue, from things petty to deep.

Welcome back to modern, human society.

“Call me old fashioned, but I’ve always preferred rock stars who shamelessly self-destruct over those that shamelessly sell out.”

You’re old-fashioned. That, or a shameless hipster. As in “How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Oh, some obscure number you’re never heard of”-type hipster. Why do you care if their making money on their talent?! You’ve jumped fully into “making money == selling out” mental trap.

Not all art has to be a Mozart symphony, Kurosawa’s “Dreams”, or the Sistine Chapel celing. Some art can simply be hip (for lack of a better word), who’s moment is supposed to be exactly for when it is produced. I suggest reading Manny Farber’s “White Elephant Art v. Termite Art” essay from 1962. Things of true beauty and things of unashamed in-the-moment-ness can both stand as art.

Oh, good,I thought I was the only one who hates those commercials. I figured people found the group singing to be cute. Where as, I just want to smack that girl in the face. How’s that for Christmas spirit?

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I am so pleased that someone wrote about how unoriginal and boring this band is. I checked them out further on youtube after seeing the hyundai commercial and could not believe the praised they received. I live in Brooklyn with my husband and we are surrounded by hipsters and indie rock. I love some indie bands, however many are a dime-a-dozen these days. This band included. Why, oh why, does the girl singer have zero affect? She truly looks like a deer in headlights. If anyone who adores this band wants to come to Brooklyn, you will see that there are a zillion people who not only look, but sound like this duo. Please, originality in music, come back!

I will echo odelay1000′s (and, originally, DJ Tanner’s) sentiment, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” I first came across these guys, I think, watching a YouTube video of them covering ‘Single Ladies.’ My reaction was, “Well this is a waste of time.” When the commercials came on I was astounded by the level of sell-out-itude going on, and that’s not even something that usually bothers me. I guess if I like a group, I’m OK with them making money for writing good songs.

I hate all commercials to be honest and usually mute them. The problem I have though is that my brother is a car dealer so I could care less about car commercials, have no interest in feminine hygeine products and the rest are just plain sexist anyway with the male being made to look foolish. Take the postal package commercial where the wife “tricks” the husband into going to the mall because shipping is easier. I feel like jumping into the TV and saying “look honey, I’m sitting my butt down to watch football – you ship and shop and do whatever you have to and if there’s enough light left in the day MAYBE I’ll hang those lights around the garage!”

Not to dismiss your point with “MMA isn’t music,” but MMA isn’t music. That’s like saying I don’t have a point because this one time I wrote about Carl Paladino. What does one have to do with the other?

I took my annoyance at the jingle and parlayed it into a greater point about music. I wasn’t outraged by the jingle because it cheapens our collective experience. I was annoyed by the jingle, and then it led to my greater point about how these acts really are a dime a dozen, and far too prevalent and given wayyyy more credit than they deserve. And all because we’re too lazy to say otherwise.

aside from the fact that these ads suck…here’s my take on the uber-indie-folk scene….self indulgant crap by pseudo-hippies, who are TRYING to be quirky. Almost as annoying as an 11 year old gangsta rapper.
Here’s the process fro becoming an Indie-artist:
1) wear a winter hat all year
2) don’t shower or shave
3) complain about “regular” people,like your parents, the gov’t and “the Man”
4) learn to play odd instruments (i.e. the glockenspiel)
5) hang out at coffee shops with others that look and act just like you, and comment on how everyone else looks and acts like eachother.
but then again, what do I know, I am a middle aged white guy.

Fie on you Kevin Marshall for bringing this pox on my house, I could have lived my whole life without Pomplamoose in it! They almost redeemed themselves by having the great Allee Willis in one of their clips, but no, even that was another wink and nudge over a joke only they seem privy to. Do they even know who she is, or did her name come up in Pitchfork as someone tres cool?

If only everyone’s minds weren’t so simple. Never saw the commercials before you posted this, waited til I got home so I could hear what you’re…umm…complaining about.

An aside, folks who know me well have been trying to push me to Indie Rock. Just can’t seem to get into it. I love my hard rockers. I love them so much. I can’t stop and I like to think it’s just my guilty pleasure – the time I set aside for myself to scream along with someone who seems just as frustrated as I am sometimes. “My” music is getting old, thus I must confess so am I. “SAY IT AIN’T SOOOOOOOOOO!!!” my mind screams. And then my brain reminds me that I always listened to “old” music anyway, so f-it. I’m not old at all! HA! Take that, rational mind!!

omg omg omg
YOU ARE SO EFFING INCREDIBLY RIGHT ON.
THANK GOD OTHER PEOPLE WERE AS ANNOYED, IRKED, and PISSED OFF as I was after seeing these commercials.
I want to punch this a-hole band in their collective faux-indie face.

“Don’t hate white people” (or Bill O’Reilly). Hate “PC America” media. Stop watching the gosh darn Today Show. In your post, you mention your anger vs. a television commercial. Multiply your anger times 10 when you watch mainstream American media news. Skewed. I disagree with you if you think that “white people” are running the show in regards to mainstream media in the United States.